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A new crate of food has suddenly appeared in the jungle. Just after Libby convinces Hurley to get rid of his store of food from the hatch, everyone begins sorting through it. While this is happening, Hurley notices a bald, middle-aged man wearing pajamas and a dressing-gown staring at him. The man then flees into the jungle, leaving behind a slippered shoe.

In flashback, Hurley is in a mental institution office speaking to his doctor, Dr. Brooks. Hurley feels that his weight is a major source of his problems, in part because of an accident when Hurley walked onto a deck with 23 people (built to hold only 8) which then collapsed, resulting in the deaths of two people, and Hurley going into a catatonic state. Dr. Brooks tries to convince him that it wasn't his fault, and also asks Hurley about his "negative" friend Dave, who tells Hurley to ignore the doctors, avoid his medication, and try to escape. Dr. Brooks proves to Hurley that Dave isn't real, by taking a photo of the two of them and then showing Hurley that Dave isn't in the picture.

Also in the institution, Hurley plays Connect Four with another patient named Leonard, from whom he hears the numbers. In a later escape attempt, Hurley steals keys from Brooks's desk and unlocks a window. Dave hops out of it, but Hurley suddenly refuses to follow him — he realizes that in order to become better mentally and physically, he needs Dave out of his life and shuts the window on him.

On the island, Sayid and Ana-Lucía interrogate "Henry Gale," who tells a new story of being part of a rescue team and finding the real Henry Gale dead, hanging from a balloon, and burying him out of common human decency. Sayid proves this false by reading a message that Gale wrote to his wife, Jenny, on a twenty-dollar bill that was found in his wallet. Exposed, "Henry" lets it slip that he knows the bearded man, saying, "He is nothing" and that there is an authority figure even higher than him.

Locke is puzzled as to whether Henry intended to be caught or not, and asks if the Others wanted to know the location of the hatch, but Henry says that the hatch is a joke: during the lockdown, he never entered the numbers into the computer or pushed the button. He let the timer run down to 0, and saw red hieroglyphs appear along with a loud "clunking" noise like a big magnet. A short time later, the number 108 reappeared and the noise stopped.

While chasing Dave through the jungle, Hurley finds a box of DHARMA "Fish Crackers", and begins gorging on them, until Dave reappears and taunts Hurley into chasing him again. Dave tells him that everything that has happened since the night of the escape attempt has been a fantasy — that after Dave escaped, Hurley went back into a catatonic state and has imagined everything since then. As proof, Dave points out that Hurley won the lottery with numbers from Leonard, which were the same numbers as the code for the button at the hatch. Dave tells Hurley that he is still dreaming, and that the way out of this catatonic state is to tell his mind it is not real by following Dave and jumping off a cliff. Before Hurley can decide whether or not to follow him, Libby finds him. He tells her that none of this is real, that even she is made up by the part of his mind that does not want to wake up, but she convinces him otherwise, in part by kissing him.

In the final flashback in the mental hospital, during the moment Dr. Brooks took the picture of Hurley and Dave, a different angle shows that there is another patient staring at Hurley from across the room. The patient is revealed to be Libby with brunette hair.

"I crawled through your vents and I stood at your computer as the alarm beeped. And you know what happened? The timer went all the way down to zero, and then some funny red pictures flipped up in its place. They looked like hieroglyphics, but I'm no expert. And then things got real interesting. There was a loud clunking and a hum like a magnet -- a big magnet. It was really very frightening. And you know what happened next? Nothing happened, John. Nothing happened at all. Your timer just flipped back to 108. I never entered the numbers. I never pressed the button. "

- "Henry Gale"

"Great plan, Moonbeam. After that we can sing Kumbaya and do trust falls."

Dave says "See you in another life" to Hurley just before he dies, this is the same thing Desmond says to Jack on both of the occasions that they parted. Nadia also wrote "You'll find me in the next life" on the photo she gave to Sayid.